Today, information searches through a communication network are being generalized, together with rapid development in the field of communication networks such as the Internet and the like. A user (a searcher) can obtain necessary information easily anytime and anywhere by using the Internet. In addition, such information searches bring a lot of changes to our daily lives.
Therefore, there are developed and suggested various models with respect to types of payments of advertising costs between an operator and an advertiser. At this time, the operator supports search services for Internet users and the advertiser expresses his/her own information site through a search, thereby obtaining advertising effects.
A general method among the methods for paying advertising costs is to expose advertiser information and determine advertising costs by a cost per click (hereinafter, CPC) method. The CPC method computes advertising costs based on the number of connections between a searcher and an advertiser when the searcher who requests the search clicks advertising information of the advertiser. That is, in the CPC method, information is exposed and provided in such a manner that advertising information of the advertiser who has suggested the highest CPC value (charge amount per click) is displayed on the highest portion of a predetermined search screen where searchers can recognize advertising information easily. That is, the CPC method sorts search results in order of the size of CPC provided by the advertiser and provides the searcher with the sorted search results.
However, the CPC method has a problem that only advertising information of an advertiser who inputs a higher CPC value is preferentially extracted or is provided on a display location where it is easy to induce a click of a searcher. It acts as an element which enables the advertiser who wants to provide advertising information thereof as results for the search request to raise a bid price. Thus, heavy advertising costs may be charged to the advertiser.
In addition, an advertising contract period is not considered in a method for paying advertising costs by the CPC method. Thus, there is a disadvantage that intention of an advertiser who wants to make a long-term advertising contract is not reflected. That is, generally, an advertising contract of maintaining an advertising period to be long has a lower bid price. Thus, in a method for exposing advertising information by considering only a bid price, there is another disadvantage that advertising information of the advertiser who has made a long-term advertising contract may be provided to a display location where recognition of searchers is comparatively low.
Furthermore, according to the prior art, a click of advertising search items, which are exposed as results of search, and ordering of the selected items are performed on the basis of the same criterion. Thus, there is required a method which can make a balance between profits of an advertiser associated with Internet search advertising and those of a searcher.
Furthermore, there is required a new type of a model for paying advertising costs which can appropriately reflect various desires of an advertiser by applying another criterion besides a bid price and exposing advertising information. In addition, there is also required a model for charging advertising costs, which can reasonably charge advertising costs by enabling the advertising costs for exposed search listings to be paid through one time click.